After WTO Negotiations Collapse in Cancun, US Pushes
Forward With Central American Free Trade Negotiations
Take Action Now to Stop CAFTA and Support Central American Workers and Farmers!
Last week, massive worldwide protests helped stop the US government from forcing its neoliberal agenda of corporate globalization on the rest of the world at the WTO summit in Cancun, Mexico. Now, the US has set its sights on a different trade treaty that would have devastating effects on the Central American people: the US-Central American Free Trade Agreement, CAFTA. The US's strategy will be to emphasize bilateral agreements like CAFTA and the FTAA, in order to pressure developing nations to accept the same unequal terms in the next WTO meeting.
CAFTA would deny the people of Central America access to vital public services like health care and water by selling them off to profit-hungry US multinationals. Privatization of public services would also result in union-busting and mass layoffs: the government of El Salvador recently fired 33 unionized healthcare workers, who had been on strike against privatization. And unfair competition from subsidized US agroindustry would drive local farmers out of business and destroy the food security of Central America, leading to mass displacement of farmers.
The people of Central America are resisting corporate globalization, taking their future into their own hands. Yesterday in Nicaragua, thousands of workers, farmers and students shut down highways across the country, demanding an end to CAFTA negotiations. This morning, thousands joined together to march on the luxury hotel where negotiators are meeting behind barbed-wire security fences. In El Salvador, the FMLN party is preparing to win upcoming presidential elections on an anti-privatization, anti-CAFTA platform. All across Central America, people are demanding a change. Let's join together with them to stop CAFTA, and build a real alternative to corporate globalization!